Now that I have your attention, I have a question for you: what do you think is the best anime of all time?

While I could look at the numbers at any anime list site, I want to hear directly from you. Back in the late 90′s practically everyone would tell me “Evangelion”, but times have changed and people change. Please leave a comment with your answer and reason, or if you’d like, write a blog post explaining your answer and link to it in the comments. Ask your friends what they think too.

For the record, here’s my answer.

It’s hard to deny that anime has good music compared to other animation. For example, I don’t think a song from Spongbob Squarepants or Ben 10 would ever make it onto the Billboard Charts, but you often hear of anime music reaching the top 10 on Japan’s equivalent Oricon Charts. With music oriented anime like K-ON! achieving huge success, that got me thinking: does music affect the popularity and success of an anime, or conversely, does an anime affect the popularity and success of a song?

In a recent post, I listed 10 anime series with good music that made it onto the Oricon Charts. Most of these series were very popular when they aired, but it’s hard to determine if that was soley because of the music or if the anime was already good. Ideally, to figure this out, we would need to put a crappy anime on the market with good music and a good anime with bad music, then watch the Oricon charts. Unfortunately, I don’t know any pop stars or anime studios that would help me, so I’m settling for the next best thing: watching Senki Zesshou Symphogear.

Now Symphogear isn’t an ideal “crappy” anime since it does have a unique setting and yuri overtones (who doesn’t love yuri?), but it lacks in other areas including plot, direction, and animation quality. At best, Senki Zesshou Symphogear can be described as average. It does have something going for it though, good music.

Now that’s what I call quality!

Nana Mizuki, who voices one of the main characters and sings the theme song for Symphogear, is a popular singer in Japan and her songs commonly rank in the Oricon charts. In 2009 her album “Ultimate Diamond” topped the Oricon Album Chart, and in 2010 her single “Phantom Minds” topped the Oricon Singles Chart. It would be surprising if her music didn’t reach at least the top 50 in a weekly ranking.

Fortunately, we don’t have to wait to see the results of combining Symphogear with Nana Mizuki’s music. Her single “Synchrogazer”, which contains the opening theme song for the anime, has already reached the number 2 spot on the Oricon Weekly Singles Charts. This could be an indication that a less successful anime has little impact on the popularity of music, but what about the reverse?

After airing three episodes, Symphogear has received a weighted rating of 7.10 by over 2000 viewers on MAL and is the 5162nd most popular anime on the site. A rating of 7.10 on a 10 point scale might sound high, but that’s actually mediocre by MAL standards. Judging by peoples’ opinions on Symphogear, it seems that having good music will not save an anime from mediocrity.

I can’t say that this is true for all anime, but in terms of Senki Zesshou Symphogear, it appears that the popularity of the anime and its music have little to do with each other. On the other hand, I do know people *cough* myself *cough* who have finished poor anime because it had good music.

So what’s your take on anime and music? Would you watch an anime just because it has good music, or would you listen to a song just because it came from a good anime? Do you think that the two can help each other gain greater popularity? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

A while back, I was compiling a list of the most powerful books in anime. I didn’t get very far because quite frankly, there aren’t many popular examples. Instead, I had another fun idea: who in the world would be most suited or likely to possess the most powerful books in anime? A few days later, a huge news story swept the Korean peninsula: Kim Jong-il dead from a heart attack. For one of the most popular (not in a good way) villans of our time to die of a simple heart attack sounded suspicious to me… like something out of Death Note, wouldn’t you say?

If you haven’t heard of a Death Note before, see the below image for a run-down of how it works:

Obviously, the easiest way to kill someone is to write their name and wait 40 seconds for them to die of a heart attack, which is exactly what happened to Kim Jong-il. The world may think that Mr. Kim died of naturally, but that’s exactly what people thought when Kira started his purge. So the question is, who was it that used the Death Note? An impoverished North Korean? a maligned South Korean? Kira himself? To answer this question, let us consider another high-profile death in the past year: Osama Bin Laden.

Everyone has heard the story of Osama’s death, a group of America’s top Navy SEALs (the cream of the crop if you will) crossed into Pakistan in the dead of night and stormed into Osama’s fortress home and killed everyone in sight. They then disappeared into the darkness with their trophy and zero casualties without anyone (except for 1 Twitterer) having a clue as to what just happened. Sounds a little too perfect, wouldn’t you say? Almost like someone had a Mirai Nikki, or Future Diary, to tell them exactly what to expect.

Now, who would gain from these two high-profile deaths? None other than one of the most public figures in the world, U.S. president Barack Obama. Am I saying that Obama has a Death Note and a Future Diary? In a word, yes. Some of you are probably wondering why he didn’t use the Death Note on Osama if he has one. Let me ask you this: has anyone actually seen Osama’s face under all of that facial hair?

What about that crashed helicopter during the Osama raid? Future Diaries exist in order for their owners to fight against each other. If Osama had a Future Diary, he could’ve taken down one of the helicopters, but was out-witted in the end. Proof of Osama possessing a Future Diary lies with the fact that he was the world’s most wanted man for nearly a decade.

But wait, what does Momoka have to do with all of this? Well, if Obama has a Death Note and Future Diary, it’s entirely possible that he also has Momoka’s Diary, which has the power to alter fate.

To see when he used Momoka’s Diary, we just have to go back to his election campaign. Here was a relatively young black man who no one had heard of (at least not where I live), and he somehow managed to become the first black person to become president, not to mention the 5th youngest. Until that point, America seemed destined to be ruled by old white guys, so it’s not hard to believe that Obama used the power of Momoka’s Diary to alter fate and change destiny.

One big question that comes to mind after considering the possibilities is: where exactly does Obama keep his Death Note/Future Diary/Momoka’s Diary? Just think of the one thing that Obama always has with him: his BlackBerry.

As seen in Mirai Nikki, it is possible for a Future Diary to take on the form of a cellphone, so why can’t a Death Note or Momoka’s Diary? In fact, why can’t they all three be combined in a single godly device?

This makes Obama the most powerful person in the world in more ways than one, and he knows it. Just take a look at all the pictures he has with apples:

Of course, we all know the relation between apples and power:

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This conspiracy was dreamed up by a crazy anime fan with too much time on his hands. Any relation to true facts and/or real objects is purely coincidental. You’ve got to admit though, a BlackBerry that combines the powers of Momoka’s Diary, a Mirai Nikki, and a Death Note would be pretty awesome. To get all of the references, please watch Death Note, Mirai Nikki, and Mawaru Penguindrum, all highly recommended by Nopy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8VniWaa5qg

I am a big advocator of not wearing outdoor shoes while indoors. This was ingrained into me as a child by my family and my elementary school. Whenever you walked inside, you take your shoes off, it’s just common sense. My reaction to one day discovering that one of my friends and many others wear their shoes indoors was much like in the video above.  I don’t think I need to point out the practical aspect of changing shoes when coming inside; instead I want to explore the significance of shoe lockers in anime.

I’m sure many of you have noticed the rows upon rows of shoe lockers near the entrances to all schools in anime. While they are mainly used to store shoes, the writers of anime seem to have taken a liking to using this area as a setting for events in many stories. The consequences usually range from broken hearts to broken school buildings. Listed here are some of the things I’ve seen shoe lockers be involved in.

Love Letters

Love letters (or in the case of Tenma from School Rumble, love scrolls) are the most popular use of shoe lockers in anime. Seeing as Japanese schools don’t have full-size lockers, shoe lockers are the next best place to give someone a letter without having to face them. These usually end up failing and if it’s not part of some comic relief, will usually mean that the letter writer will end up with a different lover.

Meeting Spot

Everyone passes through the school entrance, and everyone has to stop to change their shoes. This makes the shoe locker area the perfect place to meet up with people since they’re all gathered there anyways. Many revelations happen near the shoe lockers in anime because of this.

Finding People

For the same reasons as above, the shoe lockers make a perfect place to look for someone. It works great for stalkers because they have so many lockers to hide behind, but it’s dreaded by the stalked.

Bullying

One of the interesting things about Japanese shoe lockers is that they always seem to be unlocked in anime. Anyone is free to open any locker and do what they wish to the shoes inside, including shredding them, putting sharp tacks inside, or throwing them away. These tactics are employed against characters that the viewer is supposed to feel sympathy for, like Yuuko in ef -A Tale of Melodies-.

Scheming

Shoe lockers can also be used as a way to carry out an evil scheme. Kurumi from Kimi ni Todoke gets Ryuu and Sawako to meet up using a letter placed in a shoe locker and makes it look like they are going out.

Visual Appeal

Many anime are popular because of their visual appeal, and shoe lockers really help in that aspect. How many times have you seen a scene showing two rows of shoe lockers with the light from the setting sun streaming in from the entrance to the school? Apparently all schools in anime have an entrance facing West.

Bomb Threat

Creating a bomb threat is by far my favourite use of shoe lockers in anime. In the first episode of Full Metal Panic Fumoffu, Sousuke discovers that someone has broken into his shoe locker and promptly proceeds to disarm it the military way.

Shoe lockers have proven themselves to be more than just a place to put your shoes when it comes to anime. It’s interesting that something so insignificant can have such a big impact in so many series. The next time you watch an anime set in school, make sure to keep an eye out just to see how many other ways they can be used. If you spot anything interesting, feel free to share.

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This post is part of the Guide to Anime project. For more guides on various topics related to anime, check out the project page.

OK, maybe it isn’t actually dead, but it certainly isn’t anywhere near as popular as it used to be, at least from my experience.

Some of you may remember the golden age (or dark times, however you see it) of kawaii. Whenever a group of anime fans got together, their conversations would usually be about kawaii this or kawaii that or “kya~ that’s so kawaii!” or include a long and drawn out “kawaii~~~”. It was almost like a competition, whoever could use kawaii the most in their speech/writing was the more obsessed (and better) anime fan.

If the term was so prevalent in the past, what happened to it? Did people finally realize that there’s a shorter word in the English language that means the exact same thing (ie: cute)? Did pressure from the anti-kawaii brigade finally pay off and kawaii users simply yielded to abuse? Maybe the term was just replaced with a more ambiguous one? I think all of these had a role to play in the declining use of kawaii.

Lets consider the meaning of the word kawaii. Whenever someone new to anime would ask what kawaii meant, a senior fan would usually respond that it was the Japanese word for “cute” and rhymes with Hawaii. As for why you would use kawaii rather than cute when speaking or writing in English, it was a way of identifying yourself as an anime fan. When you think about it though, there are plenty of other ways to show that you like anime. Also considering that cute is shorter than kawaii and has the same meaning, there’s really no reason to use kawaii in the first place.

I think the anti-kawaii brigade/squad/group or whatever you want to call them had some influence too. If you were constantly flamed for using the term kawaii or for watching kawaii anime, wouldn’t you eventually stop? Kawaii was significantly over-used though so I don’t blame the anti-kawaii people for being so mean, and if you’ve ever seen Kokoro Library, you’d understand why they were against kawaii anime too. Kokoro Library was like a precursor to today’s slice-of-life anime, but it had absolutely no comedy, no drama, and no light music club. Kokoro Library was just 100% pure kawaii.

So will kawaii ever come back? Probably not. You just have to look around the internet and you’ll see why. The term moe (pronounced mo-eh) has taken over kawaii’s position as the dominant description of anything cute and/or attractive in anime fandom. To understand why, we will need to take a look at the word itself and the meaning behind it.

No, I don't mean this Moe.

Moe is about the same length as cute so that eliminates the question of why use a longer word to describe the same thing. There’s also that “for anime fans” feel about it because of the way it’s written and pronounced. Most people don’t include the accent above the e so it just looks like the name Moe. Only those familiar with anime would be able to tell that it’s pronounced mo-eh.

The term moe also has a broader and more ambiguous meaning than kawaii ever did. Wikipedia lists some different interpretations of the term coming from people who you’d think would know what it meant. Truth be told, even though I’m a member of the Moe Coalition, I still have absolutely no clue what moe is. To make it easy on myself, I consider any character I’d hug to be moe. Since no one can pin a definition to moe, it makes it hard for anti-moe people to make an argument against it, unlike the anti-kawaii people.

You just have to look at events like the Saimoe Tournament or the International Saimoe League to get why anti-moe people have a hard time. Practically every female anime character is present in the preliminary/nomination rounds and that means that they are all considered at least somewhat moe. Unless you hate female anime characters in general, you can’t really be completely anti-moe. This argument gives moe lovers a shield that the kawaii lovers never had and is probably where the old kawaii lovers moved to.

Of course, everything I’ve stated so far has just been from my personal observations over the years. Perhaps there’s a group of kawaii anime lovers still in existence in some corner of the internet that I don’t know about, or maybe it was just a coincidence that I was bombarded with so much kawaii in the past that I took it to be some big fad. What do you guys think? Is kawaii dead? Was it even a popular term when you started watching anime? Is moe the successor to kawaii? Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.

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This post is part of the Guide to Anime project. For more guides on various topics related to anime, check out the project page.

Seeing a recent episode of How I Met Your Mother got me thinking: since when did body pillows (or dakimakura as some of you like to call them) become weird?

In the episode, Lily’s husband, Marshall, leaves for a few weeks to take care of his mother after his father passed away. In Marshall’s absence, Lily decides to throw some of Marshall’s clothes on a body pillow to hug while she sleeps, but then things get weird and she starts treating it like a person. Later in the episode when Marshall’s mother is asked how she’s holding up, she replies, “It gets a little lonely. My friends suggested a body pillow, but *laughs* I’m not a lunatic.”

To me, body pillows are just as essential as a head pillow and a blanket for a good night’s sleep. I know a lot of people don’t use them, but my parents came from a place where body pillows are found in just about every bed so I’ve had them for as long as I can remember. They help keep you warm and comfortable, and they give you a sense of security, like a security blanket in pillow form. Apparently, body pillows also help with back problems, so if any of you have that, you should look into getting one.

So where did the idea that body pillows are for “lunatics” come from? Well, as far as I know, it’s because of things like this:

Yes, that last one is a bit of a shocker, but I think you see my point.

Somewhere down the line, someone turned a relatively boring object into a human substitute (in more ways than one). One of the things I’ve noticed is that the body pillows used for this purpose are flat one two sides and extremely long. They’re nothing like the body pillows I’m familiar with, which are cylindrical and not that much bigger than a regular pillow. My guess is that they aren’t cylindrical so the characters don’t look stretched, and they’re much longer to be able to fit a 1:1 scale print of a person.

I’ve also noticed that most of the body pillow covers designed to be a human substitute are not of partially nude celebrities or models, but of anime characters. What’s more, even non-anime fans are becoming aware of anime-themed body pillow covers because of shows like 30 Rock:

Now when I say I watch anime and I have a body pillow, I’m sure some people are going to assume the wrong thing.

So what do you guys think? Are body pillows just as normal as a head pillow and blanket, or are they for “lunatics” as Marshall’s mother put it?

Now to get on with what I wanted to talk about. Thanks to Jamillah’s excellent investigative work, it seems that Nanami Madobe, the first so-called “official” OS-tan of yester-year, was not officially endorsed by Microsoft Japan. Shocked? Yes, I was too. Thinking back on the release of the Nanami Madobe theme and the news surrounding her, this answers a few questions.

1. Why doesn’t the Microsoft logo appear on any of the wallpapers included in the theme?

If Microsoft didn’t contract the creation of Nanami, then there obviously wouldn’t be any logos in the wallpapers.

2. Why was Akiba PC the only news source to report on the creation of Nanami Madobe?

The fact that everyone credited Akiba PC as the source of news of Nanami’s creation is strange enough to raise suspicion.

3. Why wasn’t Nanami ever on Microsoft’s website?

Unlike the 5 characters Microsoft created to promote Bing and Hikaru Aizawa of Silverlight, Nanami Madobe never appeared on Microsoft’s site. This is a major indication that they do not own her.

Unfortunately, this revelation raises more questions than it answers, such as the following.

1. Nanami was too elaborate to have been created by a single person, so who did it?

2. How did they manage to hire Nana Mizuki to be the voice of Nanami?

3. Why go to all this trouble to create an OS-tan?

As far as anyone knows, Nanami’s character design was done by artist Wakaba, but I don’t think he would go to all the trouble of showing Nanami to the world just to get some recognition. According to Nanami’s Facebook page, she was produced by Windows 7 Mania. After visiting their website, I discovered they were owned by a company called Techno Alliance Corp. It doesn’t look like they have anything to do with Microsoft so if they really were the ones that made Nanami, then Microsoft really didn’t have anything to do with it.

After clicking through the Windows 7 Mania website, I found a little announcement about a Nanami Madobe event. If these guys are hosting Nanami events, then it very likely that they had something to do with her creation. As for why they’d make her, it’s probably to get more system builders (most of which probably hang around akiba) to buy Windows 7 Ultimate DSP. So what do you guys think, are there any other companies that would have benefitted from the birth of Nanami Madobe?

EDIT: Just as I was about to post this, I looked at the image files that came with the Nanami theme. Sure enough, under the copyright section it says “WAKABA/Windows 7 mania. All Rights Reserved.” So I guess that’s problem solved. Looks like most of the internet is wrong about her being official.

Also, for anyone disappointed that Microsoft didn’t actually make Nanami, it looks like they released 3 new characters this week. In addition to Hikaru Aizawa, the mascot for Silverlight, Microsoft has now released Lei, Aoi, and Yu. My personal favourite is Lei :)

EDIT 2: I forgot to post this earlier, but if you want to read the BBC News writeup on OS-tans that followed the radio broadcast, you can find it here.

Now I’ve decided to bring my blog back to life and hopefully get back to those 15 posts per month. The problem is that there’s so much stuff I can write about that I didn’t know where to start, so I decided to take a look at what people have been searching for on my blog and here are the top 3 results:

I have to admit I was pretty surprised at these results. To those 8547 people who were searching for hentai, I’m sorry to disappoint, but there is none on this blog. “Hikikomori” is understandable because of a previous blog post I made, but the only Queen’s Blade I have here are a few shots of Megami Magazine and Nyantype Magazine posters. The first time the word “anime” appears is 12th on the ranking, but the actual search term used was “anime+hentai”. Sadly, figures and nendoroids don’t even make the top 20, with the 20th item being “anime+girls+no+clothes”.

Based on the above information, it seems a lot of visitors come here searching for hentai or ecchi material. If that’s what people want, then I could post about all the Megami and Nyantype magazines that have been piling up plus some extra stuff, but I’ve decided to ask you guys, my readers, for your opinion. To me, it’s you guys, who actually read what I write, that are most important to me, not some random people looking for naughty pics. So I’d like to ask: what would you like to see more of or updated more frequently on my blog? Traditionally, I’ve written about anime, figures, and magazines, but if you browse through the archives, you’ll find I’ve dabbled a bit into other things like artbooks, games, manga, and even my personal life. I’m looking forward to hearing any thoughts you might have.

Despite how much I like anime, I’ve never been a big fan of incredible events with no viable scientific explanation. This includes things like flying through the air with no apparent form of propulsion, creating vast quantities of energy from nothing, and penetrating the armour of a vehicle using a weaker material by using shear willpower. This is one of the reasons why Martian Successor Nadesico was and still is one of my favourite anime: it used the latest theories of quantum mechanics and newest technological advancements of the 90s to explain how things like instant transport and the terraforming of Mars was possible. When there was no way to explain something (like the generation of particles to perform a gravity blast), the topic was simply avoided rather than trying to make up something fake and untrue.

With that said, one of the things that have been bothering me this season are the esper powers in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun (A Certain Scientific Railgun), and the general use of the term “esper” in anime. The word “esper” was derived from the acronym ESP, which stands for “extra-sensory perception.” As the name implies, someone with ESP has an extra (or 6th) sense that the rest of us don’t have, and are generally known as psychics. An esper, in this sense, does not refer to someone that can shoot lightning bolts out of their body since that’s not a sense but an an ability. To be fair though, words often change meaning when they’re introduced through a different culture or language, so the definition of an esper in Japan might be different from the rest of the world.

Now to get to the main point of my post: how do esper powers in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun work? The explanation that they gave in the anime was that espers have an AIM (An Involuntary Movement) Dispersion Field around them that allows them to use their powers. This is obviously a made-up term which doesn’t help us understand how esper powers work, so I’ve thought about how some of the esper abilities (mainly Mikoto and Kuroko’s) would be possible and explained them below:

Mikoto Misaka:

Before I try to explain how Mikoto’s powers might work, lets list all of the things that we know she can do. First off, she can deliver an electric shock to someone by touching them; secondly, she is able to shoot lightning bolts from her body; third, she can control iron sand as she wishes; and fourth, she can fire a coin like a railgun. As stated in the anime, Mikoto is also called Academy City’s “electromaster,” indicating that she is able to do all these things through electromagnetism.

The way I see it, Mikoto’s body would have to be made out of a different type of material so that she can supply electrons to run a current through herself. One type of material would be metals, but since Mikoto isn’t a robot (or at least I don’t think so), she probably has some kind of ceramic in her body where she somehow induces the electrons to move from the valence band to the conduction band. This way, she would be able to run a current through her body without too much resistance. To be able to shoot bolts of lightning from her body, Mikoto would have to be able to create a charge difference between her and her surroundings. I figure to do this, she would need to have two materials in her body rub against each other like when you rub a balloon against your hair. The next part of Mikoto’s powers, which I can’t explain, is how she as able to control the direction of her lightning bolts. When an object is discharging electrons, it’s not like the electrons will just follow someone’s orders and go in a certain direction. Instead, the electrons will always take the shortest path to neutralize the object. This is why lightning tends to strike tall towers, the electrons in the clouds only have to move the distance between the cloud and the tower rather than the cloud and the ground.

The inability to control the movement of electrons also pokes a hole into Mikoto’s other abilities: moving iron sand and firing a coin like a railgun. Moving iron sand the way Mikoto does in the anime would be possible if you could make a complicated magnetic field, but since there’s no way for Mikoto to control electrons, then there’s no way for her to use them to make several magnetic fields to control the movement of iron sand. Mikoto’s patented “railgun” move would technically be possible if her body was made out of different materials, but not in the way that they’ve shown in the anime. In simple terms, a railgun works by accelerating a ferromagnetic object through a tube by generating a magnetic field in front of it. If Mikoto’s body were vastly different from a normal human, it would be possible for her to extend her arm out, place a coin on her shoulder and shoot it wherever she’s pointing her arm because then she would be able to generated a magnetic field in front of the coin, pulling it along her arm. It would not be possible to flip a coin out and fire it once it falls back to her hand.

Kuroko Shirai:

Kuroko is my favourite character in the anime because of her hilarious Mikoto-rape moments, crazy ideas, and cute character design. Unlike Mikoto, her powers only allow her to perform one action, and that is teleportation. I’m sure all of you have been exposed to the idea since it’s so widely used in science fiction. The two most popular ways in how teleportation is explained to work is through data transfer and bending space. Kuroko obviously doesn’t use any type of device to teleport, so recording her body on a computer, then destroying it and rebuilding it someplace else obviously isn’t how she teleports, so that leaves bending space.

If you imagine that the universe is 2-dimensional like a piece of paper rather than 3-dimensional, then if you fold that piece of paper, it’s possible for something on one end of the paper to move to the other end without crossing the middle. This analogy is commonly used to explain how you can teleport someone or something from one place to another. The problem with this method is that it would require insanely huge amounts of energy to bend the universe, so how does Kuroko do it?

The only way that I could think of that would allow Kuroko to teleport from one place to another is if 4-dimensional beings existed. If they do exist, it could be possible that one of them has taken a liking to Kuroko and is bending space for her. Lets imagine for a moment that 2-dimensional beings in the shape of squares lived on a piece of paper in your hand. You would be able to see inside a square since you’re looking at it above, but the squares on the piece of paper would not be able to see inside each other since they can’t move into the 3rd dimension (above) the piece of paper. It would then be possible for you to see a set of instructions within a square explaining where it wants to go and all you would have to do is fold the piece of paper to line up the square with its destination so it can just move over. Kuroko might be like that square, where a 4-dimensional being is able to read her thoughts by watching the electrical signals in her brain. This could explain why Kuroko can only move things she’s in contact with because she would have to push it to the other side once space is bent.

So to sum things up, Mikoto would have to be some kind of monster do be able to do the things in the anime, and even then she wouldn’t be able to perform some of her moves. Four dimensional beings would also have to exist for Kuroko to be able to teleport the way she does without an energy source. Basically, the esper powers in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun do not work except under very extreme assumptions, and even then some of them still don’t work. I guess it’s a good thing that the target audience is too caught up fantasizing about biribiri to care if she could technically exist or not.

If you have other ideas on how esper powers might work, feel free to share. Any nerds reading this can also point out any mistakes I’ve made since this is mostly stuff I remember from school.

My luggage resembles Mafuyu’s the most,  just can’t live without my games. Although, I do get some stares when I have to whip out my xbox going through airport security. NDS’s don’t seem to draw as mch attention, probably because the security guards are more used to seeing those.

I’ve only seen 1 girl travel like Minatsu does. On a trip to Europe she only brought a small suitcase with a change of clothes, toothbrush, etc.

Then of course is the mysterious girl that could be smuggling drugs, weapons, confidential government data, or who knows what! Chizuru isn’t someone to be messed with >.>

Kurimu’s bag looks almost exactly like what mine did 10 years ago, those were good times. I can understand how she feels though, knowing that you’re going on a long trip make you want to bring a lot of stuff to keep you entertained.

So do you fit into any of these 4 categories, are a mix, or completely different (perhaps maybe like Ken Sugisaki’s bag)? I’d love to hear what other people take with them while traveling.